Lux (The Nocte Trilogy 3)

Because fragments come flying into my mind. Memory fragments. Images of that same exact expression, of his ring glinting in the moonlight as he tells me something. It’s a confession and he’s alarmed, upset, anxious.

It’s the night of the accident. Before the accident. I see his lips moving, but I can’t hear the words. It’s like he’s in a wind tunnel, the words are static, and I’ve seen this exact scene before in a dream.

I strain to hear the words from my memory.

“What’s wrong?” Dare asks me now, lowering his head once more, sliding his warm lips across my neck as he leans me back.

At this exact inopportune moment, as Dare’s touch lights my skin ablaze, the fragments finally fit into place. The puzzle pieces fit together. At last.

The memory forms and I suck in an appalled breath as I yank away from him.

“I remember,” I whisper. Dare pauses in apprehension, his onyx eyes glittering, his hands frozen on my arms. “I’ve known you…for so long…you…you were here for me all along. You came here for me.”

His eyes close like a curtain and I know that I’m right.

His breath is shaky and his hands tremble as he touches me, as he refuses to pull away even now.

“You have one question left, Calla,” he reminds me, his voice somber. “Ask it.”

So with fear in my heart and ice in my veins…I do.

“What is real?” I finally ask, choosing my words carefully. “I don’t know anymore. My memory has holes, and the memories I do have seem impossible.”

“They aren’t impossible,” Dare tells me. “Trust me.”

“Can you explain?” I ask him. “Please, please. I can’t take much more of this. I just need the truth.”

“Where do you want me to start?” Dare is resigned, and he’s sad.

“Start with the night my mom died,” I suggest.

Something wavers in Dare’s gaze, but he gathers himself.

“Do you remember it? Do you remember how bloody I was?”

I’m already shaking my head from side to side, slowly, in shock. Not because I don’t remember, but because I don’t want to.

“There was a lot of blood,” I recall, thinking about the way it’d streaked down Dare’s temple and dripped onto his shirt. It’d stained the t-shirt crimson, spreading in a terrifying pool across his chest. “I didn’t know if it was yours or… hers.”

“It was neither,” he says now, his face as grave as death. “It was Finn’s.”

But that’s impossible, because I’d only imagined that Finn died. It was my mother.

“You held me up,” my lips tremble. “When I was falling down. You held me while I waited for… Finn.”

I’d waited for Finn to call.

I’d waited and waited and waited.

The sirens wailed in the night, and I’d paced the floor.

Dare nods. “I’ve always held you up, Cal.”

“When my father came in, and said… when he told me about the accident, everything else faded away,” I recall, staring out at the ocean. God, why does the ocean make me feel so small? “Nothing else mattered. Nothing but him. You faded away, Dare.”

The truth is stark.

The truth is hurtful.